He was well above average intellectually, and when he was 13 years old he enjoyed programming computer games. Aaron was on a trajectory to becoming a very productive member of society. While Aaron is impacted more than anyone by what he’s lost because of schizophrenia, we’re all impacted indirectly. His mental illness continues to rob him time and again of not only his ability to draw but his ability to write, read and even remember what day of the week it is sometimes. Aaron hasn’t picked up a pencil to even attempt to draw a picture in more than four months now. He drew the picture in the middle several years ago, and the picture on the far right was drawn in the past couple of years. Aaron drew the picture on the far left about a year before he started exhibiting symptoms of a mental illness. As a young teenager, he especially liked to draw pretty girls and baseball players.Īlmost immediately after we realized Aaron was suffering from a mental illness, we could see a decline in his ability to draw, and over the past 23 years of suffering from a very difficult-to-treat case of schizophrenia, Aaron can barely draw at all. As Aaron grew older his artistic skills matured and he won awards because of them. His drawings would start off as a few lines and swoops and suddenly a perfectly drawn Mario, Koopa Troopa, Bowser, or Daisy would materialize on his sketch pad. He was gifted with the ability to reproduce well-known cartoon figures such as the Mario Brothers characters. At the young age of three years old, he was drawing cartoons like a professional cartoonist. It is no exaggeration, however, that my oldest son, Aaron, was an extremely good artist. I have seen how Mental Illness is like a thief in the night, because, like a thief entering a home in the dark of night, Mental Illness unexpectedly robs many of their abilities and skills without warning.Īs parents, we can be known to exaggerate our children’s abilities. It is quite possible this figurative phrase originated in the Bible where in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 it says, “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Like authors and songwriters preceding me, I will reuse this idiom. “Like a thief in the night” is an idiom that has been used by many in songs, speeches, and documents for thousands of years.
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